


The Pale Stranger

by BetterBeMeta



Category: Hollow Knight (Video Games)
Genre: Someone will always eventually attempt to rebuild society, Zopherus problems, kind of an alternate universe?, parallel to Refuge for Resolve, postgame but PK is alive... from the perspective of a DLC character who never existed, survivor's guilt, unusually hard-skinned bean farmer attempts to rebuild society
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2020-11-22
Updated: 2021-01-01
Packaged: 2021-03-09 00:36:11
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 4
Words: 8,725
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/27155332
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/BetterBeMeta/pseuds/BetterBeMeta
Summary: Vigna came to Dirtmouth and both of them were of the same kind: the last to die. As the new world struggles to be born, a pale stranger appears.
Comments: 1
Kudos: 28





	1. The Story of Stalwart Seeds

**Author's Note:**

  * For [ClockworkRainbow](https://archiveofourown.org/users/ClockworkRainbow/gifts).
  * Inspired by [Refuge For Resolve](https://archiveofourown.org/works/27011317) by [ClockworkRainbow](https://archiveofourown.org/users/ClockworkRainbow/pseuds/ClockworkRainbow). 




	2. The Pale Stranger Sighted

Things had never been the same since that night. And it had been a night, though it was always hard to tell in Dirtmouth. There was a certain smell associated with night, that flooded down from the Howling Cliffs and pooled in the town. It sunk in the cold air as the dust blew up into the sky, mingling with the dingy clouds that made it so dark at all hours. The distant wind softened, and though the lumaflies under glass never retired their wings slowed half a beat. 

Ever since that night, stars peered through the diffuse glow cast by Crystal Peak. A shroud rested between them, so inky that the Stalwart, Vigna, scoffed she'd ever considered Hallownest black inside at all. Reflections and glimmers formed a matte ambiance, no matter how distant the rays. Even as the city slept its dreams must have glowed bright enough to cast shadows. The rare lightless vaults and deep pits were a relief, sometimes, until a bug realized that they too contained flickering lamps, glowing fungus, or that strange glimmer pressing in from the walls too far-distant to be beheld with the eye.

One time Vigna had beheld a darkness like what lived between the white stars, it had been staring through a door opened into the abyss. All while she dreaded who would open such a path, she felt such impossible relief looking into that blank field that she sat on the pier for nearly an entire day to rest.

And the last time she had beheld that darkness was on that very night, when the incandescent glow faded from the Black Egg Temple and the void within birthed a tortured figure, carried by a guardian she had met only once.

Time had passed since then, and that bug still had not recovered. Vigna considered, walking along the deserted main Dirtmouth avenue, visiting them as they slept. 

Her feet instead found their way to the old well, like they had many times in the past season. Gripping her fork in one claw, she began to descend. The metal, worn to a shine from use, protected her palm from the rope's burn as she slid. She touched down heavy, tired knees creaking, and then set out east to the barricade.

The barricade! A tumble of every broken shell or stone that could be hauled and piled high. Someday, it would have to be cleared away— the Temple of the Black Egg posed little threat now, and the line of reclaimed Hallownest territory had begun to expand past its tentative borders. A defender or two still patrolled it, but on that night... she remembered being there, as the Infection threatened to swell to burst and all nails had rallied to try and hold back the onslaught. Halfway through, she supposed, this would have been a death sentence for her, and for all of them. She should have evacuated, and not had any vain ideas the unmitigated Infection was something her little silly project could hold fast against.

(Wouldn't it be better though, to all die together?)

"Oi, get up!"

"I'm awake!"

The fool on the ground scrambled upright, picked up his nail and pounded his chest in salute. His companion on watch stared in disarray, but fell in line nonetheless. "Don't get excited," Vigna sighed. "It's only me."

There wasn't much to an answer save a dumbfounded shrug. It had been easier when there were only a few refugees, enough to know all their names. 

"I can take over," Vigna said. "Go, sleep."

And just like that, the restless swapped positions, and Vigna found herself staring into the void again, over the barricade, into the mouth of that empty Egg. This time, though, there was no relief in the darkness. She sat on a ruined, overturned shellcraft drum, and waited for time to pass.

She waited for whatever it was, to be over.

She waited, and knew she might be waiting, and waiting, forever— and it was not in her nature.

Until, what had to be the morning up above, and a huddled figure crawled out of the dark to the threshold of the temple. Their garb was indistinct, and drab, and stained. A strangely shaped, protruding shell above that mass quaked, smeared with grime. And yet, she saw them clearly against the void within depths. Faintly luminous? Repulsive to the black, none of it could encroach.

Vigna sat very still, hardly breathing. The stranger poked at the temple's open portal, examining it. There was a methodical pattern to their movements, but they were of an unsettling fluidity, and she could not see their arms or legs at all. The longer she sat, beneath the notice or purpose of the stranger, the more she realized that this was not going to teach her anything.

"Who's there?" she called out. "Friend or foe?"

(For there were still foes out there, even while the Husks lay where they fell. Looters picked over Hallownest's cured corpse, and the traitors of the Mantis tribe were not improved in temperament without the Plague.)

Vigna glimpsed dark eyes, or dark pits of a fair mask as they snapped to stare directly at her sound. An instant later, they departed with such scuttling haste that it was difficult to look at. A flash of flapping tattered cloth, a blur of too many legs, and the stranger was gone before she could begin to advance over the barricade to meet them. Their silence, whoever they were, felt like someone she had met before, and not seen for some time. But when had that little shadow ever shown fear?

Weariness pressed down on her and drooped her antennae. She appreciated a return of mystery, answers hiding somewhere in the depths. At least it was a distraction from the growing issue of Dirtmouth, the results of hard work. Her ability to go crawling after mysteries was another. She was glad, finally, to get back to the practical chores to be done, in the right order so they would grow an answer. Sleep, eat, ponder, ask, and only then— investigate.

\--

The sleep was usual to her: peaceful and, to her memory, dreamless.

The meal was a bean porridge with mushrooms. There were plenty of supplies at the moment, and much of the hunted game from below went to the Mantis warriors, as their kind preferred. Vigna had tasted their fare before; it was nutritious and plentiful after many creatures had been declared free of plague, but in the end she preferred familiar tastes. It was best those supplies went to those who kept promises not to hunt and butcher thinking, cultured bugs.

The ponder was... not the best ponder she'd had, but it would have to do. Worries about the town sprung up like weeds, but she did all she could to pluck them aside. On a small tablet of slate she had found, Vigna tried to render from memory what she had seen, though the stylus of ash-wax was awkward in her claws. She envied bugs out there with fine, careful fingers that could produce the most graceful letters and sketches. Through hard work, an image of confused priorities emerged. She had mistakenly tried to express the strange array of legs, yet the drooping tattered garment covering them all at once, and the lines were not anywhere near lovely. What stood out, though, was the pronged helm, or mask the stranger donned that was so familiar to any who'd visited even the outskirts of Hallownest.

"Hm," she uttered, staring at the pale stranger's image. She hardly ever felt her efforts were in vain, but something about how she had failed to capture the vision stuck on to her. Even dirty and wretched she felt a sublime-ness missing without which this was no accurate portrait, and it was nothing she had the skill to add. It was a horrible feeling, to sense that even if she tried earnestly for a hundred seasons she could not squeeze the sense out onto anything, not onto slate, or figure of clay, or work in metal or stone, never to be arranged in a wreath of flowers, or even screamed into the sky— 

Artists, Vigna thought, led a very painful and difficult life and she was glad to not be one. Armed with what she had, she left the modest dwelling she slept in and set out into the town to finally make a round or two asking after the stranger. The activity in the village parted around her as she passed, and after a few delays sidetracked to decide this-or-that, she reached where the Fools had been camping to the west of the village proper. "Do you know this bug? Have you seen this bug?" she asked, of the fiercest of their warriors: an ant champion of storied interest. 

"I never forget a challenger, and I have never slain their like," she admitted. "But if I were to face them, I will take caution."

It was difficult to explain to the Fool that the stranger was not known to be for slaying, but some discussions were hopeless anyway. She began working her way east, to the next camp on the outskirts of the town. But there were only riddles and laughter to be had from the troupe, some of which Brumm even apologized for. One reaction stuck with her, though, the bemusement of Grimm himself.

"So," the enigma mused, "He's still alive."

Vigna moved on. Sly had little to say about the stranger, other than that Vigna's tight lines suggested she held a stylus with incredible nerves, like a novice grips a nail for dear life. After that cut of criticism, Vigna rested awhile on the old bench in the center of town to think about the matter.

"What has you so troubled, there?" asked Elderbug, who did like to stay where the company passed and enjoyed the activity returned to his once-faded town. 

"Have you seen this bug?" Vigna asked, knowing it was unlikely for the old one to have seen any from outside this one place in the world.

"I'm sorry, but I have not," said Elderbug. "But they look familiar, somehow. I am sure they must be from nearby."

Vigna thanked him for the moment and continued on her way. She knocked, and then ducked into the next shop she knew well. The little chime of metal and blown glass rang behind her.

"Ah, Vigna? Is this about the..."

"I'm sorry, I'm not a paying customer today," Vigna admitted, knowing her lengthy commission was still in progress. "I mean to speak with Cornifer."

The snoring bug turned over in his sleep, enjoying his lazy morning. Vigna pulled out her slate, raising it up to the level of the bunk behind the counter and declared, "Cornifer, you have explored much of Hallownest. Have you seen any bug like this before?"

Cornifer opened one sleepy eye. Then he closed it, and opened it again. Then the other. Then, groping for his spectacles, he finally shoved them over his proboscis and peered down at the sketch. "Yes, I believe I have," he said. "But, hm... not in the shell, a graven image, wait, I made a note of it— "

He nearly tumbled out of bed, caught only by his agile wife and spun around in the correct direction, flailing for the correct scrap of paper he had been carrying at the time. Clutter filled the already-crowded shop, and when Vigna was sure Iselda would have protested the fuss she only sighed contentedly, as if she found the wild abandon charming. 

"Was it in Greenpath? No no, Queen's Gardens, hm... Oh, bother, it's been water-stained... this can't do. Iselda, dear, I'm off to confirm this! Could you...?"

"Don't be gone long today, you hear me?"

And like that, the cartographer pushed past Vigna, and was off to check his findings. There was nothing more to learn here, at least for another day. Vigna moved on, after a second apology, and a few minutes spent picking up all the mess that she'd prompted. Not far outside, she met the spirited little Bretta, marching toward the well and her shift to watch the barricade. This was merely a detour in her heart's true journey, she assured everyone... and yet she showed up to her duty every day. She wielded her usual wand, which was a little more like a decorated cudgel with ribbons tied in a bow. This way, she presented for battle in her brightly polished helm. Vigna admitted, if she had not seen Bretta defend herself before, she would have had doubts. But the ferocious passion she wielded that 'wand' with... much of Dirtmouth adored its darling little "soldier of love!"

"Have you seen this bug, Bretta?" Vigna asked. "If they return to the barricade, don't scare them. Can you let me know?"

"Of-of course, I will stealthily observe this, um, are they a villain, or...?"

"It isn't clear," Vigna admitted.

"I will stealthily observe and report their movements, Captain!"

That hit Vigna in both of the eyes. "Captain? Who's calling me that?"

"Oh, I just thought... um... is there something else you'd like to be called? Leader? Ma'am?"

"I'm still just Vigna," she assured. "Just because we made it through the Plague, doesn't mean anything's changed."

"Right, that makes sense," Bretta mumbled. Then added. "C... can you show me the picture again? I forgot, and I want to do a good job..."

"Here."

Bretta looked very hard at the sketch, lifted the visor on her helm to better see. "Oh, he looks so sad," she said. "I will definitely tell you if I see him...!"

At the well, the camp of Mantis warriors gathered in silent purpose and contemplation. Theirs was only a temporary residence, a grim alliance hard-won between this little town and their skillful tribe far, far below. When Vigna showed them her rough image, they had little to tell her about it or any kind related to it. It would be rude to impose much longer than necessary, so Vigna did not linger and instead found herself past the village to the east. She spent a few minutes taking peace of mind among the little farm plot set up there, over graves of bugs no living bug remembered. Surely they did not mind playing such an important role, to help the town stay strong. Not everything could be hauled up through the stagway, by the poor old stag himself. On the far edge, she saw a great figure stooping to rest.

"Sir Ogrim," she called out. "Would I be interrupting?"

She really didn't know what the former Knight got up to when he was not merrily standing guard over outposts at old stag stations, or repairing the barricade, or fighting back the wildlife that would approach it. He was a strange bug, and not anyone to startle. It was best to approach with caution, after they had first met, an experience that Vigna was not keen to repeat. (Involving a fragrant ball of moist, lukewarm dung thrown directly into her eye with great force, to explode all over her with an equally fragrant, equally moist, equally lukewarm splat...)

"Not at all! Not at all, I'm taking my peace — Lady Vigna, you seem troubled. What can a knight such as I do to raise your spirits?"

No matter how many times Vigna would correct the knight, he always was convinced she was a Lady of high character and a person of status, or should have been. Perhaps he considered her to be fit for the court he'd once served. There was no changing this opinion, it seemed. She sat on the ground beside him, and in her mind, they were only two assorted beetles in the dirt, where beetles often were. "There's a lot to be worried about, but none of it is very dire," she confessed. "But, could you see this sketch I made, of... well, it isn't important. What does this bug look like to you?"

When Ogrim beheld the tablet, he leaned close to take in its details. He was rapt, considering every jagged stroke and lopsided curve.

"No one has been able to give me a very good answer, as to who this might be," Vigna said. "I haven't had any luck all day."

"This is, without any doubt, our glorious king," Ogrim declared. "And what a perfect likeness! I swell with pride, remembering what it was to stand beside him."

Vigna was skeptical. She turned the lopsided sketch upside-down, but he righted it immediately and held it up to the faint dayglow through the clouds. The shiny wax pencil shimmered in the pale light. At a distance, there was something to it, Vigna supposed. But the sureness of such a bold statement... the stranger that she had beheld did not seem very king-like, even if the pronged head could be, possibly, a crown...

"When did you last see the King of Hallownest?" she asked. 

"Hm... It was a sad day, that I and the other knights were ordered to evacuate the castle. These orders we received from the King himself. In that time, the affliction had thrown the city into chaos and many were frenzied, or succumbed quickly to becoming husks where they fell. Dryya split to escort our Queen to safe refuge, I believe Ze'mer went her own way, to find comfort that she knew... I do not know what became of Hegemol, or I would have visited him. Isma I escorted to her grove, but she asked me to leave her..."

"I did not mean to till up such painful memories," Vigna apologized. 

"Lady Vigna, do not be sorry! I cherish all memories of my former comrades— if some are sad, that is because the time we shared was so precious," he reassured, quick to defend all from even his own feelings. "I do not know what became of our king, but if he sent us away it was with good reason. He did all he could for Hallownest, before the end."

Ogrim's noble demeanor did not break, but there was a tiredness in his speech, a desperation that his unwavering loyalty and trust grappled to reconcile. 

"It's not an end, if enough folk are still here," Vigna reminded him.

That did much to console him. He was an easily comforted man, which Vigna supposed was a wise thing to be. Nothing she had by chance learned of this former King's doings had brought her peace. No comfort had rewarded determination to learn for certain, the cause of suffering that had laid the land so low, eliminated her village, scattered Hallownest's survivors and for Ogrim, threw his honor and loyalty into the sewers.

"Your cause is just and noble, and I am proud to be your ally," Ogrim affirmed. "Truth be told, I came here to this place today to be reminded of the past myself."

"Oh? How?"

"I stood by as you did, on the barricade when the affliction cleared at last. I saw who emerged," Ogrim said. "I did not speak, it was not important next to their grievous injuries. But I believe I knew... them. Briefly."

Vigna could believe that. Her mind peeled back, to a cold and dead memorial she had seen weeping in the rain in the city deep under their feet. It had to have been built, and its subject had to have been known to a few at least.

Ogrim continued, "I had heard that they had recently awakened, in the past night. I intended to see them, but I am afraid I have been gathering my courage. Ha, isn't it ridiculous for one such as me?"

"Not at all," Vigna said. "I think it is ordinary to be afraid, when you're concerned."

"True, true! That's the way of things, isn't it? Why, your fearlessness in battle is the same— what could pierce your shell, what foe could concern you? Hegemol was a jolly soul for that reason as well. He would hate to see me mope. Come, Lady Vigna. Let us visit the Hollow Knight, if they have risen."

He had hauled to his feet fast enough to suggest his long years as a honed warrior. Vigna staggered upright somewhat slower, but she noticed he receded behind her as she entered the easternmost refuge in Dirtmouth: the cave belonging to... Jiji.

Vigna did not know Confessor Jiji very well. The one previous visit she had made, the strange bug had discomforted her with words about a weight upon her soul, 'borne only by the mighty," that she did not agree with. She had only returned when in the chaos surrounding the Black Egg's opening, the one held inside lay near-death and with wounds no ordinary bug quite understood. Only with help of the Troupe did the critical decision to deliver the Hollow Knight to Jiji occur in time to save what must have been their life? Their ghost? Their shade? It did not matter, but that after many rituals, and a tireless vigil, they survived.

The Hollow Knight lay resting within, propped up on three old beds bugs had hauled out of abandoned houses. Their prodigious height required it, and the clutter invaded out-of-place in the occult cave where Jiji herself slept sitting on the floor. 

"So you have returned at last," said Jiji, who herself staggered awake almost instantly. "Your burdens have only grown, I see."

"This isn't about that," Vigna said. "The Hollow Knight, are they well?"

"Not yet. They may never be, for what they are," said Jiji. "But they are feeling better."

"May we see them?"

"I haven't stopped you. They are right over there," Jiji scoffed. "Speak to them, or don't, as you wish."

In the time the Hollow Knight had been the subject, they had struggled upright to sit propped up on their one arm against wads of dry moss and old cushions that had been brought for them. Their stare was eerie, fixed somewhere past Vigna's face... of course, they would see Ogrim first, if they had met. Vigna was a stranger to this bug, or vessel, more accurately. Unlike the little shadow she had met before, the Hollow Knight had been grown tall and powerful, but they shared the same nigh-luminious fair mask and the same utterly empty holes where eyes ought to dwell. Vigna could not decide if the entity she saw was fearsome, tragic, handsome, or wretched before her. Perhaps none, or all of those things. 

There was that same... sublime-ness to them, that Vigna had not been able to force into her claws, out of her stylus, and onto slate. And that stranger had been very concerned with the Black Egg itself, where the Hollow Knight had been held. Surely, if Ogrim was right, however unlikely that was...

"Hello," Vigna said, to the Hollow Knight. "I'm sorry, but... could you tell me, if you know this bug?"

It was pragmatic to ask, the ultimate confirmation of the truth... but even as she put the slate before the Hollow Knight, Vigna lashed herself inside for being the worst sort of heartless scum. The Hollow Knight stared silently at her work, and for a moment Vigna almost felt hope that her rendering was too clumsy to spark recognition, or that the stranger had been the Pale King only in Ogrim's wistful imagination.

The Hollow Knight began to shake, and without any liquid tears at all, forgot their voicelessness and cried.


	3. On the Trail of the Stranger

Vigna set out the very next morning before any other bug was awake, before any could stop her with questions, concerns, unnecessary permission, or requests for her to oversee their plan to gather more mushrooms in the wastes below for food. None of that. She packed her satchel and was down the well long before the stars had faded, and had reached the barricade to find the single watchman snoring, too. This time, she did not rouse them and quietly as she was able, pulled herself over the threshold, and advanced. Even a day and a half obscured the marks in the dirt that the stranger had made, and Vigna did not consider herself much of a hunter, but the skittering retreat was still readable. Besides, there was only one way to go: east, into the tunnels. 

Of course, the crossroads were a crossroads; each of the many junctions up ahead could be where she lost the trail. But, she thought, if she stood here and tried to predict what would be true she'd drown in all the possibilities she'd never see. The scratchings were frantic through the eastern causeway, and when she began to descend into the earth she lost them entirely. She investigated every tunnel branch for signs of the trail. 

If the stranger had passed into the crystal caverns, to ascend the peak from the inside-out, there was no hope of chasing them. Shuffling glimbacks and other wildlife would scatter any evidence, and the stones had dimmed within, blanketing the mines in shadow. Perhaps even worse, the nightmarish mutterings of former husks that once labored there... at least maddened by the affliction, they had no voice to cry about their deaths, buried alive and left for dead…

Just as Vigna's search seemed futile, the old scratchings could be found in the dirt at the bottom of the first descent. They led her to an open wrought checkpoint gate set into the stone, where the stranger must have paused. Dark smears joined the exotic tracks. She could not identify if it was an ink stain, or a kind of slime, or black blood, but it did not dry in the air and had no odor, and to engage with it seemed very unwholesome. Still, she reached into her satchel and pulled out an old waxed-paper, a piece of trash she'd wrapped something else in and then forgotten to discard, and folded it into a sort of lumpy packet. She scraped a little of the dark substance off the wall, which did not seem to ooze out the corners at all, and folded it up tight.

The vengeflies pestered her past the checkpoint, as layers of deposited rock gave way to fossilstone, clusters of ancient... shells? Eggs? Their crags were home to the vengeflies, some still engorged with former infection but otherwise no threat to her. Whatever the black substance was, it made the trail so plain that even her rudimentary skill in tracking would be more than enough. 

One thing she could say about the Stranger, they had not stopped after that one delay, and the periods between dark drips were increasing. Either they'd gotten faster, or they'd closed the wound, or had otherwise slowed down their leaking. They were eager to follow the direction of an old sign, with its text long-faded, to the east and past a long and lonely lane strewn with corpses. While many former husks had risen again, trapped by some new delusion, others had not. They lay in ruins, eyes in shadow, to rot away.

A lumafly lantern dimly illuminated a steep drop in the fossilstone, where the rocky polyps gave way to larger whorls of yet more ancient creatures. Breeding aspids bumbled between the massive shells, bloated and noxious. Vigna wondered if long, long ago, all bugs were of enormous size, or if this grave was where the elder giants had gathered and died, and the city sleeping below was only the newest layer to settle. If only the aspids would leave her alone to take a closer look! Their acid's bite was weak after the infection had subsided, but they were still unpeaceful animals. They had never been able to scar her carapace, but neither could a flaming oilrag in all its unpleasantness.

To gather her wits, Vigna took refuge within the old tram station and was relieved to find no evidence of recent use. It had taken some doing to learn what such a massive device even was, or what it was for, and she couldn't imagine how it worked. It was such a shame, that a useful thing like that would budge for no one in its long-lost secrets. Unlike the living Stag, it was not a thinking being and would sit there forever without compassion for any bug to need its services. And yet, she had seen clear signs that other trams had been in use within the last season, and had only just stopped again. Who it was that knew their secret had never come forward, and it did not seem like the Stranger had commanded them either. It would have made them impossible to follow.

When the way seemed clear, Vigna hurried further down to see the wide, whorled avenue that once must have been a proud causeway to a small village. A large smear of the trail sat tellingly below the small path down, as if the stranger had tumbled to arrive with a hard fall. It smeared through the steady doors of a nearby structure: a chapel or other space built by bugs' hands, not by time. Inside, a disarray of habitation sprawled over cracked plinths and spilled onto the floor. Tablets engraved with text long ago thronged in great piles by the walls, some indiscernible. Despite the mess, there was no dust settling on anything at all. A single unhappy lumafly in glass was all that illuminated a worktable that once had served as an altar, stained in black. She picked it up, a tiny lantern, and cast it around. Outside the opposite door where the draft escaped, a pile of brittle former husks withered. 

This was surely the stranger’s lair, but Vigna could not tell what in the world they ate, or where they slept, or anything at all about them. Only their interest in the buried and the obscure. It was possible to wait here for them to return, but when would that be? 

Only when she turned around to leave did she notice that out the door where she came, more of the stranger's smeared trail could be seen further down the causeway. The lights had long been snuffed-out down here, but with this tiny lantern in hand, there was more to be revealed. Vigna sighed, adjusted her satchel, and set off once again into the darkness.

\--

The stranger's ability to climb up as well as down, even 'leaking', was nothing to dismiss. Vigna did not want to think she had fallen out of habit, after her significant journeys half a season ago, but she privately vowed to spend a little more time out and around the ruins if she was struggling to haul up the narrow ledges and crumbled paths.

The aspid she dispatched at the tines of her fork though, suggested her aim and coordination had not diminished there. She could remember waving it around to shoo them away, once. There was something, maybe, in surrounding oneself with warriors, and gladiators, and other nailworthy bugs. It was impossible not to learn something eventually. 

(What was possible to learn from her, she wondered? There was not enough of her to surround much of anyone.)

When the trail led past the feeding tracks of the wild goam, Vigna braced herself and rushed through the cramped tunnels. She was not nimble, and though their spiked teeth were too short to pierce her carapace, the force they lunged out with could knock her off her feet. This time, she escaped with one narrow miss, the wind rushing past as one of the tunnel-eaters slammed up into the space behind her. When she stopped to catch her breath, she plucked a vengefly that had been ineffectually chewing on her back and tossed it aside into the rocks.

On the other side of that, past a minor aspid nest, a significant gap to leap with her fork to catch the edge, and a winding tunnel, Vigna saw the stranger had plunged straight down into the fungal wastes. It would be more difficult to follow them there, but it was worse to have come all this way for nothing. At least the trail was very clear: the mushrooms were soft footing and even a gentle touch bruised them. Unfortunately, it was obvious the stranger was capable of crawling down head-first on the walls. 

The bitter acid fumes touched Vigna's eyes and made them water. It was a long way to fall; narrow ledges that were not slick with mushrooms were treacherous even to one with her claws. the need to look down for footing eclipsed the need to not look down for sanity. Sagging fungoon rinds festooned the fungal floor below, empty of spores and soon to be medium for yet more moist growth. Vigna had thought things had been unexciting — was this the stranger's work? Or was the mantis tribe active? Or, what about some other aggressive life moving through the wastes— 

The trail terminated at a tiny gully set into the cave wall, bubbling with acid. The stranger was able to slip through it, somehow, though anyone could see evidence of their pronged head scraping past with difficulty. Vigna threw up her arms in futility, but couldn't even manage a curse. "I'll take the long way around!" she declared, and if anyone was listening or could hear her, she did not care. Grumbling, she stabbed her fork into the soft, spongy walls of mycelium and began the even-more arduous ascent.

\--

Vigna pressed on as long as she could. To stop, she felt, would let the aches catch up with her and her breath to slow and betray her. Up, up, out of the wastes, back into the crossroads, up past the old frozen lifts that none could budge now, and on to the pilgrim's gate and Greenpath beyond. But there came a point where if she did not gather her strength she would collapse in exhaustion at the worst of times. The pilgrim's road was treacherous. Much of it crumbled into that same acid that poured forth through invisible veins and cascaded into the fungal wastes.

She had made only one expedition into Fog Canyon, and only ever set out from Queen's Station. Even Cornifer was hazy on the place, as its other entrances and exits were so difficult even for a bug with curious acid-tolerance. The canyon was steep, misty, and perilous with dangerous life. It was hard for Vigna to say how any of it came to explode so violently when disturbed. Maybe the volatile juices within those thin, translucent membranes sparked and burst into fire? They did reek of sulfur.

While she sat on that peaceful pilgrims’ bench, Vigna rifled through her bag. The packet with the black substance had not leaked, or soaked through in any way. She unfolded the paper, to see that vile-looking dollop. It kept its secrets. Vigna fished a dry little bean out of the seed pocket of her satchel and placed it on the paper, on top of the strange goo. Then she watched, to see what would happen. 

For a short while, nothing. Then, almost as if alive, the dark substance shuddered and slithered upward onto the bean. It began to break the thing down, but before it had been consumed, it began shooting out thin and hungry tendrils in every direction. Vigna forgot her fatigue entirely, screamed, almost forgot her fork as well while leaping off the crumbled vista. The mass became more and more erratic as she scrambled deeper along the path juggling too many things in her claws. She barely noticed the poor mosskin she punted out of her way as she leaped down the path, glancing around for somewhere— anywhere— to dispose of her error without causing yet more trouble. An acid pit steamed nearby. When she chucked the mess in, she was relieved to see it dissolve peacefully. She had tested sticks, leaves, rocks, glass, geo, and other small objects in the noxious pools before, and it was good to know they also ate up dreadful mistakes.

If she was already up there was no point going back to the path to sit down. Her destination was quite a way off of it. With her battered fold of a map grasped in one claw and her fork in the other, Vigna pushed her way forward. At her size, there was no hope to be stealthy. The best she could manage was to stoop down as low as she could. At times she scuttled on all-legs like a crawlid to fit herself through the wild bowers. Worse, to feel her way and avoid blind drops hidden by lush overgrowth into yawning caustic pools. 

The mosskin did not like her intrusion either. But they were far too weakened in the plague's wake to rally to drive her away. While none of their kin wanted anything to do with her or any bug she had sent to Dirtmouth, Vigna could sympathize. They kept to their own and kept their own.

A squit darted out of cover, eager to suck Vigna's juices. The moment it's long, needle-like mouthparts contacted her knobbly shell they crinkled once, and then crumpled in again in a zig-zag fashion. The impact alone finished it and caused it to flutter to the mossy floor, foiled in regret. Vigna hardly took notice of it. As the oppressive growth began to blot out the glimmers of reflected light, there was no point squinting at her map. She relied on that little lumafly globe to push deeper down the ancient beaten track. The reek of rotting plants strangling rotting plants rose in a cloud with each footstep to disturb the earth. Brambles scraped alongside her, and in the darkness, an unfortunate thud struck her carapace. "Ugh!" A seedpod, dripping with sap rolled somewhere around her feet, almost causing her to trip and go tumbling through the leaves.

Trying to re-orient herself, she reached out with her empty claw only to grasp the flaking shell of a long-dead bug, killed at their little camp for trespassing, or succumbed to poisons, or— 

Vigna took a deep breath, ignored the stickiness of the ooze gluing every unfortunate bit of dirt to her shell, and set herself right. The tight passages came out to where the acidic pools gathered and poured through subterranean ways down below, and after some uncomfortable hopping and shuffling past a lazy Durandoo, Vigna peered down into the frothing haze of fog canyon.

She took herself aside again and explained to herself that she had come very far very and to walk back with nothing to show for it would be a waste. She had no good excuse for going so far out of her way to find no answers.

That's very foolish, the herself replied, because she had no excuse to blow herself to bits for no reason in an unpleasant place like Fog Canyon, and what did it say if she had 'nothing better to do' than throw herself into an Ooma chasm?

Vigna thought this was unreasonable for herself to think. There was still a point in planting seeds when no one could know for certain they would grow well. But Vigna did concede that she was very cunning because the longer she argued herself into standing still, the longer she did not have to brave the fog.

She descended the canyon, then by dead reckoning turned aside and headed in the direction of what had to be the fungal wastes, some great distance through rock and acid and hostile wilderness. The atmosphere was deceptively calm here, and the humidity extreme. It was easy to imagine the air was so thick that the Uoma were lighter than it. Vigna crushed the shimmering, film-thin bubbles in her wake, cautious for any that harbored a developing Ooma's guts inside. Wild lumaflies crackled angrily, but Vigna feared she could never hear a swarm approaching for how underwater her head felt. If any of these near-silent hazards were to float up behind her she would never hear them until turning around would blow her antennae right off.

The narrow crevasse in the rock gave way to the reservoir where much of the acidic water rested. Once, maybe an underground river had poured forth here and cut the canyon the way that mountain runoff cut rivulets into soft dirt. Now, the flow was dammed and did not threaten to spill over. Only narrow shoulders and curious lofted islands spanned the cavern now, each one lazily attended by perilous floating Ooma. Vigna wrung her fork in one hand, exhaled, and made her first unhappy leap across the rocks.


	4. The Stranger Found

Past the initial lake of acid, Vigna met a curious sight, that she had not expected. Jaws bit the path in half, thrusting up out of the earth and clamping down from above. Vigna could pass through where they parted, but shadowy wisps sputtered between each mandible that reminded her of the dark smears that troubled the Stranger's path through Hallownest. The diffuse lumafly haze could not touch what bubbled inside the open maw. It was natural to ponder if it would solidify as a scab, or gush from a dark artery. But these were only ponderings, and none eclipsed the necessity of stepping through the gate and carrying onward.

The way through the mist carried long for longer than Vigna cared for, and terminated in a secondary narrow chasm. This, Vigna stretched her already- tired arms for and dug into the wall with beetle's claws. There were fewer Ooma directly in Vigna's path than she dreaded, after a while, but that was no comfort. The missing ones were replaced by signs of recent terrible explosions. Or, as recent as she could figure anything here to be, suspended in dewdrops. The gently forming bubbles caught ash inside of them, like a transient amber. When she found solid footing and clearance, she climbed, and then when she was above the tiny cragged landing that was her target, eyeballed the distance. Pushing failure out of her mind, she hurled herself through the air.

Vigna would not call herself an acrobat, and in her opinion, if any bug was to disagree they had unusual standards. Or it could have been relative if they were some sort of slug or a very slow-moving worm... 

The arc of her leap steepened as she fell, narrowly passing a swarm of sparking lumaflies. As she came down against the other cliff wall, she stabbed her fork into the soft soil and tilled a dark streak to slow her descent. She looked down. A luminous bubble burned dangerously by her left foot. She held her breath before stepping down off the wall, packing the dirt down so it did not shower from above and disturb the thing. Then she fled through the narrow passage before it could get any special ideas.

Fungal growth began to overtake the stone around her, which meant she was getting close. Mycelium threaded through the earth, loosening it, and likely had over time crumbled the deep, wide pit that gaped before her. Vigna peered down. Dendrous stems of rubbery mushrooms fingered through the space, all reaching for the moisture spilling down from the canyon in a dank cloud. A somewhat bruised fungoon had moored itself on one of the stems.

Far below, a crumpled and washed-out shape curled around a large, sturdy root.

"Hello, down there!" Vigna called out, then coughed. Acid fumes floating up to mix with Ooma fog was not very good for activities like shouting, or breathing.

The Stranger did not stir or answer her. 

She poised with fork in hand, tilted her head a little, and threw. The fungoon popped with a pitiful moan and its remains pinned to the opposite wall of the deep pit. The way was clear, but her knees still quaked, and her stomach threatened her very sternly, not to jump down there after them.

Vigna jumped down after them. But sensibly, to a nearby giant mushroom stalk. Grabbing it, she swayed through the air until she dropped down onto another, back-first, then bounced gracelessly to flop onto the far wall. Vigna slid, smearing her belly in fungal slime. On the way down, she grabbed her fork, and once she could grip used it to reach for another of the mushroom stalks. It was barely out of reach, and she stretched, poking it until it bobbed in momentum close enough for her to cling on to. It was springy, but Vigna was heavy, and it bowed down, lowering her to the ground at last, as if she'd planned it all to work out so well.

Only paces away, was the Stranger. They were smaller than her, as she figured, but up close something about their presence made up the difference. Even face down, in the mud. Their prongs were not some sort of hat, she confirmed but molded out of the same stuff as their head's smooth, white armor. Acid-stained and time-worn tatters of a cloak barely covered their curious body. It tangled them in strips where the seaming had long rotted away and the strips of cloth wadded up, mixing with their assemblage of limbs.

It was unkind, Vigna thought, to begin counting limbs when the real question was if they were alive. She prodded them with her fork a little. No reaction. Then again, more slowly. When she reached over for the third time, it occurred to her that this was probably very unkind, too. In that short pause, a tiny, weightless bubble from the canyon above alighted onto one of the fine limbs poking out. An involuntary twitch betrayed the truth.

"Don't embarrass both of us," Vigna said. "Playing dead won't fool anyone."

Vigna leaped a pace back as the twitch evolved into a full-body shudder. Then those many arms and legs tensed, and with a weary shuffle flipped right-side-over. Their cloak settled over them, hiding a chitinous tail and almost disguising the junction in their body that arced upright and transitioned into something resembling a more ordinary bug. Two cryptic eyes peered up at her, not empty as the little shadow's had been, but velvet-black and recessed so she could not see any life within. A deep crack spidered between them, sundering the pale mask.

"Does this please you?" said the Stranger, in a voice like a whisper ground down by stones in the most obscure depth of the earth.

"No," said Vigna automatically.

The Stranger considered this. Vigna considered this too, and while she had been completely honest…

"That isn't very important," she clarified. "But you can stand, so that's something. If you fell as far as you must have."

"I was not injured," said the stranger. "My descent was assisted significantly."

Vigna looked up at where the fungoon had once stuck itself and imagined exactly who she knew this was bouncing between every rubbery mushroom until they reached the cavern floor. "That's good news to hear about someone lying in a heap at the bottom of a cliff," Vigna admitted.

Then, the reality of things caught up to her at last, like it had been trailing on the end of a string tied to her brain and slowly been unwinding itself back into place. This stranger in front of her, he had to be the Pale King himself. The very same who supposedly had once vanished long ago, when Hallownest had cracked apart and wept for its godly parent to please save it from this unimaginable horror. But no Pale King had come then. Why now? And why was she here speaking with him? Had she even thought about what to do if she had caught him? Because here she was, the ancient inception of a forgotten kingdom only so far away. What could be done now? Who would decide this? What would happen if this being, of such weighty importance, would come to Dirtmouth above? What of Ogrim? What of the Hollow Knight, who had wailed in true, pure anguish at the mere sight of—

— never mind the strange black puddle that had seeped into their shadow on the earth, smeared their tattered rags—

Vigna in her mind stabbed her tilling fork deep into that roiling dark soil and turned it over gently, patted it down.

The stranger in front of her asked, and while his tone was difficult to discern, it sounded like a second asking of a question she had not heard the first time, "Who are you?"

That was a good question, Vigna conceded because it was very rude to forget step one of all meetings, a proper introduction. "I'm Vigna," she said. Then when that did not explain anything, she said. "I called out to you at the temple, I don't know if you remember."

"I am not a foe," said the Stranger.

"What?"

They did not move as they spoke. No part of them did, not even a single shifting of weight. But their perfect black eyes narrowed, squinting as if in scrutiny. "'Friend or Foe,' was what you said."

"Oh! I see," she confirmed, but could not resist muttering, "You know, I don't know why anyone would answer 'foe.' If they were one wouldn't it serve them to say 'friend?' I should retire that question..."

"Possibly. But I have no time to consider trivialities," said the Stranger. "I must take my leave. Good-bye."

The problems with this were many, and none of them very good to say aloud, so Vigna had only moments before the stranger scuttled away to propose, "Ah! Please let me go along with you. I can see that if the fall did not get you, the Ooma were much less kind."

She gestured to his singed, tattered, and soot-stained cloak with one vague claw. Actually, the whole of him looked a mess, when one looked past the faint luminescence and composed presence. The stranger was acid-scorched, stiff, crumpled from at least one blast, smeared with fungal spores, and afflicted by whatever stained their footsteps an ink-black.

"And we must be going in the same direction," Vigna added, not liking at all how this stranger reduced what should have been common sense to a childish plea with nothing but silence.

The stranger fidgeted, the only tiny indication that there was a bug with nerves before her since she had prodded him with the tines of her fork. "If that is the case, I will not impede you," he said.

Vigna looked up. There were only two options to escape this long shaft— to ascend somehow, or to fit through the tiny, acidic gully that had been an impenetrable gate for her, but not for the Stranger. Vigna clenched her claw around her fork; the Stranger had beaten her without the slightest effort, outsmarted her plea as if the circumstances of the world itself aligned around him, and not her at all.

The jutting wall of earth taunted her. There was leverage here, unlike on the other side. "Rest while I clear the way, so I can pass."

She had approached no more than two paces before the stranger held up one of their hands, white knuckle-bones facing behind. Vigna's eyes and feet obeyed an instinct her mind had never known. The cold command in that single motion held her as surely as if the ground before her feet had sprouted iron spikes. Silently, that empty palm and long, delicate fingers turned upward. White dew, as if wept from the faint stars far above wicked into it, pulled inward into a point so bright Vigna could not tolerate it. The stranger's grip on it tightened, and with the simplest motion let it free.

In an exhale of white patterns that strained Vigna's imagination, the white power expanded rapidly and when it became too large and the lines too thin it ceased to be anything more than a glowing spot burning behind the eye. A perfectly spherical divot had been eaten out of the overhang, and the acid below had been consumed. All that remained was an inverse orb, edged by cooling glass. The stranger passed through that... crater. If it could be called that. His many legs clicked, the echo dying against the fungal outgrowth on the other side. Vigna could imagine those steps echoing, clicking somewhere else, long, long ago.


End file.
